Marcel Popescu brings Paunovic to Craiova

Universitatea Craiova signed Ivan Paunovic (23), from Srem. The Serbian midfielder agreed to a short contract, until the end of the season, but with an option to extend it for four more years. Interesting enough, the player brought in Romania by FIFA agent Marcel Popescu had been training for the past couple of weeks with Astra Ploiesti, but failed to agreeterms when it came to put pen to paper.

Although his move to Ceahlaul Piatra Neamt was officially announced, Vasile Buhaescu (22) switched sides today and went on loan to a second division club, Concordia Chiajna. The striker, a former U21 player for Romania, belongs to FC Vaslui, but would have had no realistic chance to feature in the second half of season, given the tough competition for a place in the team and the club’s ambition to try and mount a serious title challenge.

Dinamo and Astra Ploiesti, teams that were sharing the rights of two players, Georgian Paun (24, forward) and Eugen Craciun (23, full back), found an agreement that makes Paun a Dinamo player and transfers Craciun to Astra. If Craciun will continue to play for Astra, where he was on loan for the past two years anyway, Paun was re-directed to Politehnica Iasi, on loan until the end of the season, after a week or spent in Dinamo’s training camp from Turkey.

Radu Baicu

• 15 years of continuous work in scouting, for top clubs and companies;
• Worked for clubs like Bayer 04 Leverkusen and Hannover 96, covering the Romanian market;
• Worked for Birmingham based company ‘The Scouting Network’ (www.tsn.co.uk) as a football scout;
• Worked for Zurich based company Boutique Football as a scouting network coordinator;
• International scout for Young Boys Bern for 2 years, covering Eastern European football.
• Working for the past 5 years as an international scout for a top French club.